When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Western governments debated the so-called nuclear option: severing Russian banks and state companies from SWIFT, the messaging system that moves money between the world’s financial institutions. That the option was even on the table reflected two decades of growing Western confidence in economic warfare. Within weeks, that confidence turned into action: The European Union cut off seven Russian banks from SWIFT, and some $300 billion in Russian central bank reserves were frozen.
The underlying logic was simple. Isolate banks, energy companies and defense contractors from the dollar-based financial system, then apply secondary sanctions to anyone who keeps dealing with them. Entity by entity, the pressure would constrain the target state’s ability to wage war and bend its behavior, all without firing a shot.
Moscow began testing that assumption within months of the invasion. First, it shifted some of its trade settlement into Chinese yuan. Then, in early 2025, it launched the A7 digital payment network and the ruble-pegged A7A5 stablecoin, a venture majority-owned by a sanctioned oligarch and backed by a Russian state-owned bank that primarily serves the security sector.